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Temperature on Admission to the NICU for VLBW Infants

Temperature VLBW Graph

Fraction of VLBW Infants Hypothermic on Admission to the NICU.

Project start, March 2009. Cycles 1-4 are quarterly aggregates of data from all VLBW (<1500 grams birthweight) infants admitted at participating NICUs during the active improvement phase ending March 2010. Hypothermia was defined using the WHO definition, temperatures were recorded within 30 minutes of arrival in NICU. Statewide sustainment was followed in participating centers by collecting data on all admissions during the month of December 2010, and again during the month of June 2011. Future sustainment data will be collected in the Golden Hour Project.

Comments

  • Maury Regional Medical Center

    It takes more than one time to get it right.

  • Methodist Germantown Hospital

    We found lots of places to improve.

  • University of Tennessee Medical Center

    It’s a lot harder than it looks, and it has taken a lot longer than we thought it would.

  • Middle Tennessee Medical Center

    It’s a much wider problem than we thought it was, involving other areas of the hospital other than the NICU. It requires a larger group of people working together.

  • St. Mary’s Medical Center

    Make the collection form as simple as possible, so you can focus on the improvement.

  • Nashville General Hospital at Meharry

    Teamwork is essential.

  • Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt

    You can’t make changes in a vacuum.

  • Jackson-Madison County General Hospital

    While we had tackled this before it was very helpful to review our practices and update them and educate new staff and found out that we do still have room for improvement.

  • Gateway Medical Center

    It’s not just the end point. It’s also in the process.

  • Regional Medical Center at Memphis

    Educate, educate, educate. It’s not education every other month, it’s education every day.

  • East Tennessee Children’s Hospital

    There are a lot of challenges, one of which is communication.

  • Johnson City Medical Center

    Education has been an important piece all along.

  • Baptist Hospital

    A state-wide project like this cannot be done without cooperation. It also helps when participation in the project is fun.

  • Summit Medical Center

    We improved once we started educating the staff.

  • Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center

    Picking up ideas from other groups speeds everyone’s progress.

  • Centennial Medical Center

    In order to insure that we adhere to our protocol, we must continually educate all caregivers about the need to provide the most scrupulous care with central lines. I have learned that this is not a one-time project nor a one person project, but an ongoing process with the whole unit involvement, which will evolve and change in order to meet our goals. The value of the PDSA cycle was made obvious through this process. Carefully planning, doing or implementing the practices, studying our results, and then acting as needed to apply changes required to continue to meet our goals was an effective tool for our committee. It is a good model which can be applied to other projects. The knowledge that I was able to share with the committee, which was gained through the collaboration with other TIPQC participants, has been a valuable component of this process. We were able to learn and incorporate new ideas learned through TIPQC, Also, we could evaluate our care in relation to other participating institutions. This will ultimately reduce cost, which is always an important component of our health care system.

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